By the time you read this, India will have the largest population on the planet, surpassing China’s. China has always had the largest population on earth, hasn’t it? What’s happened? The answer is that demographic dynamics are tied closely to socioeconomic and technological development.
China’s economy has been growing rapidly year after year, transforming a rural society with a national GDP of less than US $60 billion (and per capita income of US $90/year) in 1960 to an industrialized, urbanized society nearly 300 times the size in 2021 (US $17,734 billion). Household incomes have also soared (by 140 times, to US $12,556 per capita in 2021). These numbers are accompanied by numerous social indicators, like 100% electricity access, 99.4% clean water access, 99.85% literacy rates, but also a sharp decline in population growth rates (2022): 8.5 births per 1,000 inhabitants and fertility rates of only 1.3 children per woman. The population has also shifted spatially. In 1960, 84% of Chinese lived in rural areas, whereas by 2021 two thirds of Chinese lived in cities.
India’s economy and social development indicators have also been growing fast – but not as fast. Between 1960 and 2021, the GDP grew from US $37 billion to US $3,176 billion. Annual per capita incomes also multiplied from US $83 to US $2,257 in this period. Starting at a similar 82% rural population rate in 1960, India’s population remains predominantly rural (65%). India’s population growth rates remain much higher than China’s: 16.6 births per 1,000 inhabitants and fertility rates of 2.1 children per woman. These figures explain why India’s population surpassed China in the last week of April, 2023, and why it will continue to grow to about 1.67 billion people by 2050, while China’s total population should decrease from 1.43 billion in 2021 to 1.32 billion in 2050.
Elsewhere, growth patterns have also been shifting. For centuries, scientists have worried whether the planet would have sufficient resources to sustain increasing populations. Despite these worries, population has grown steadily. It took 11 years for the world population to grow from 7,000 million to 8,000 million (November 2022). But growth has been slowing down and it will now take 15 years to reach 9,000 million (2037) and much longer to reach an expected peak of 10,400 million in 2086, whereupon population will start to decrease.
But are the planet’s resources sufficient to sustain so many people? In 1968, the Club of Rome anticipated hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation in the 1970’s, and a little later 18 scientists published Limits to Growth (1972) forecasting that the planet would run out of gold, mercury, tin, zinc, petroleum and natural gas by 1993! Yes, a narrow view of resource depletion has led to pessimistic forecasts. But there are no real limits to human resourcefulness and ingenuity, leading to the technological developments that have enabled the planet to continue growing. Even Wikipedia now defines Resources as “all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants.” As challenges arise, humanity finds solutions to growth.
But we also need to find solutions to the natural habitat and the devastating effects of climate change brought on by intensified use of natural resources (particularly fossil fuels) in world development paths. That is a major challenge we can discuss another time.
